Diocesan vs. religious priests

let us say that there are currently around 1620 priests total in
the other six dioceses. (This seems on the high side, since my
hand-count of Pittsburgh priests contains only about 200. I don't
know what to make of this.)

Later I added a guess about why:

I wonder if it is because my hand counts, taken
from diocesan directory pages, include only diocesan priests, where
the total of 2500 also includes the religious priests. I should look
into this.

I think this is probably correct. The list of Pittsburgh
priests has a section the the bottom
headed “Religious Priests Serving in the Diocese”, but it is empty.

Kennedy's Catholic Directory

While attempting to get better estimates for the total number of
active priests, I located part of The Official Catholic
Directory
of P.J. Kennedy & Sons for the year 1980, available on the Internet
Archive. It appears that this is only one volume of many, and
unfortunately IA does not seem to have the others. Luckily,
though, this happens to be the volume that includes information for
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Scranton. It reports:

Philadelphia

Pittsburgh

Scranton

(p. 695)

(p. 715)

(p. 892)

Priests: diocesian active in diocese

831

547

374

Priests: active outside diocese

33

29

13

Priests: retired, sick or absent:

121

60

52

Diocesan Priests in foreign missions

2

2

26

Religious Priests resident in diocese

553

243

107

Religious Priests from diocese
in foreign missions:

93

78

26

Total Priests in Diocese

1631

957

572

I have no idea how authoritative this is, or what is the precise
meaning of “official” in the title. The front matter would probably
explain, but it does not appear in the one volume I have. The cover
also advises “Important: see explanatory notes, pp. vi–viii”, which I
have not seen.

The Directory also includes information for the Ukrainian Catholic
Archepathy of
Philadelphia,
which, being part of a separate (but still Catholic) church is
separate from the Philadelphia Roman Catholic dioceses. (It reports
127 total priests.) It's not clear whether to absorb this into my
estimate because I'm not sure if it was part of the total number I got
from the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference.

But I am not going back to check because I feel there is no point in
trying to push on in this way. An authoritative and accurate answer
is available from the official census, and my next step, should I care
to take one, should be to go to the library and look at it, rather
than continuing to pile up inaccurate guesses based on incomplete
information.

Sipe's earlier estimate

Jonathan Segal points out that A.W. Richard
Sipe,
a famous expert on clergy sexual abuse, had estimated in 1990 that
about 6% of U.S. priests has sexually abused children. This is close
to my own estimate of 6.1% for the six Pennsylvania dioceses. Most of
this agreement should be ascribed to luck.

Pope Francis issued a letter to Catholics around the world Monday
condemning the "crime" of priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up and
demanding accountability…

The Vatican issued the three-page letter ahead of Francis' trip this
weekend to Ireland, a once staunchly Roman Catholic country where
the church's credibility has been damaged by years of revelations
that priests raped and molested children with impunity and their
superiors covered up for them.

I have seen several places the suggestion that this is one-third of a
total of 900. This is certainly not the case. There may be 900 priests
there now, but the report covers all the abuse that the grand jury
found in examining official records from the past seventy years or so.
Taking a random example, pages 367–368 of the report concern the
Reverend J. Pascal Sabas, who abused a 14-year-old boy starting in
1964. Sabas was ordained in 1954 and died in 1996.

I tried to get a good estimate of the total number of priests over the
period covered by the report. Information was rather sketchy. The
Vatican does do an annual census of priests, the Annuarium Statisticum
Ecclesiae, but I could not find it online and hardcopies sell for
around
€48.
Summary information by continent is reported
elsewhere[2],
but the census unfortunately aggregates North and South America as a
single continent. I did not think it reasonable to try to extrapolate
from the aggregate to the number of priests in the U.S. alone, much less
to Pennsylvania.

Still we might get a very rough estimate as follows. The
Pennsylvania Catholic
Conference
says that there were a total of just about 2500 priests in
Pennsylvania in 2017 or 2016. The Philadelphia Archdiocese and the
Altoona-Johnstown Diocese are not discussed in the grand jury report,
having been the subject of previous investigations. The official
websites of these two dioceses contain lists of priests and I counted
792 in the Philadelphia
directory and 80 in
the Altoona-Johnstown directory,
so let us say that there are currently around 1620 priests total in
the other six dioceses. (This seems on the high side, since my
hand-count of Pittsburgh priests contains only about 200. I don't
know what to make of this.)

[ Addendum 20180820: I wonder if it is because my hand counts, taken
from diocesan directory pages, include only diocesan priests, where
the total of 2500 also includes the religious priests. I should look
into this. ]

Suppose that in 1950 there were somewhat more, say 2160. The average
age of ordination is around 35 years; say that a typical priestly
career lasts around 40 years further. So say that each decade, around
one-quarter of the priesthood retires. If around 84% of the retirees
are replaced, the replacement brings the total number back up to 96%
of its previous level, so that after 70 years about 75% remain. Then
the annual populations might be approximately:

From the guesses above we might estimate a total number of individual
priests serving between 1950 and 2018 as !!2160 + 2810 - 70 = 4900!!.
(That's 2160 priests who were active in 1950, plus 2810 new arrivals
since then, except minus !!354\cdot20\% \approx 70!! because it's only
2018 and 20% of the new arrivals for 2010–2020 haven't happened
yet.)

So the 301 predator priests don't represent one-third of the population,
they probably represent “only” around !!\frac{301}{4900} \approx 6.1\%!!.

[ Addenda: An earlier version of this article estimated around 900
current priests instead of 1620; I believe that this was substantially
too low. Also, that earlier version incorrectly assumed that
ordinations equalled new priests, which is certainly untrue, since
ordained priests can and do arrive in Pennsylvania from elsewhere. ]

Benjamin Franklin was not impressed with the Quakers. His
Autobiography, which is not by any means a long book,
contains at least five stories of Quaker hypocrisy. I remembered only
two, and found the others when I was looking for these.

In one story, the firefighting company was considering contributing
money to the drive to buy guns for the defense of Philadelphia against
the English. A majority of board members was required, but twenty-two
of the thirty board members were Quakers, who would presumably oppose
such an outlay. But when the meeting time came, twenty-one of the
Quakers were mysteriously absent from the meeting! Franklin and his
friends agreed to wait a while to see if any more would arrive, but
instead, a waiter came to report to him that eight of the Quakers were
awaiting in a nearby tavern, willing to come vote in favor of the guns
if necessary, but that they would prefer to remain absent if it
wouldn't affect the vote, "as their voting for such a measure might
embroil them with their elders and friends."

Franklin follows this story with a long discourse on the subterfuges
used by Quakers to pretend that they were not violating their pacifist
principles:

My being many years in the Assembly. . .
gave me frequent opportunities of
seeing the embarrassment given them by their principle against war,
whenever application was made to them, by order of the crown, to grant
aids for military purposes. . . . The common mode at last was, to
grant money under the phrase of its being "for the king's use," and
never to inquire how it was applied.

And a similar story, about a request to the Pennsylvania Assembly for
money to buy gunpowder:

. . . they could not grant money to buy powder, because that was an
ingredient of war; but they voted an aid to New England of three
thousand pounds, to he put into the hands of the governor, and
appropriated it for the purchasing of bread, flour, wheat, or other
grain. Some of the council, desirous of giving the House still further
embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not
being the thing he had demanded; but he reply'd, "I shall take the
money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is
gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they never objected to it.

And Franklin repeats an anecdote about William Penn himself:

The honorable and learned Mr. Logan, who had always
been of that sect . . . told me the following anecdote of his old
master, William Penn, respecting defense. It was war-time, and their
ship was chas'd by an armed vessel, suppos'd to be an enemy. Their
captain prepar'd for defense; but told William Penn and his company of
Quakers, that he did not expect their assistance, and they might
retire into the cabin, which they did, except James Logan, who chose
to stay upon deck, and was quarter'd to a gun. The suppos'd enemy
prov'd a friend, so there was no fighting; but when [Logan] went down
to communicate the intelligence, William Penn rebuk'd him severely for
staying upon deck, and undertaking to assist in defending the vessel,
contrary to the principles of Friends, especially as it had not been
required by the captain. This reproof, being before all the company,
piqu'd [Mr. Logan], who answer'd, "I being thy servant, why did thee
not order me to come down? But thee was willing enough that I should
stay and help to fight the ship when thee thought there was
danger."